


but with more babies

by kenopsia (indie)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friends minding your biz and fixing your infertility, Kid Fic, M/M, Mentions of Sarchensey, Or... paving the way for a Bluesey baby, Past Infertility, Self-Indulgent, family fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-03-08 20:49:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13466268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indie/pseuds/kenopsia
Summary: When Ronan came back to his body, Adam was touching the machine in their bed. He looked concerned.“Look,” Ronan scrambled, voice raspy with sleep, limbs stiff the way they always were when he was coming out of sleep paralysis. “It isn’t what it looks like. It’s not for us.”Adam peered at the chrome of the machine. “I … can’t think of a conclusion to leap to.”





	but with more babies

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is very self indulgent. It is a puddle of pudding. I wanted to write about test tube babies and a few things the future might hold if things were nonsense, but also rosy. Also, I forgot Opal existed until I was almost done with this fic, so this is a universe where.... she doesn't.

When Ronan came back to his body, Adam was touching the machine in their bed. He looked concerned. 

“Look,” Ronan scrambled, voice raspy with sleep, limbs stiff the way they always were when he was coming out of sleep paralysis. “It isn’t what it looks like. It’s not for us.”

Adam peered at the chrome of the machine. “I … can’t think of a conclusion to leap to.”

Ronan pushed himself to his feet, snatching the contraption from where it sat on the bed, and carrying it down the hallway. “Ro?” Adam called after him, and then catching up with him as he was crossing the threshold into a spare bathroom they rarely used at the barns. Ronan dropped to his knees and opened the cabinet. 

“We shouldn’t talk about this. I don’t want to.” Ronan said, because he’d been in a committed relationship for five years now, and he wasn’t a perfect boyfriend, but he had learned at least this: he didn’t have to talk about everything with Adam, and the opposite was true, but the sentence  _ I don’t want to talk about it  _ is much more effective — not to mention, more honest — than refusing to answer questions.

“Obviously,” Adam said, his voice dry, leaning against the doorway with no shirt and his sleep pants. His posture put Ronan at eye level with his navel. Instead of looking at it, Ronan stuffed towels around his dream object until it looked hideously conspicuous, but wasn’t visible behind them. “I mean. Never? Or just not right now?” 

Ronan gave his creation a pat to make sure the towels would stay put. “One of those options. I haven’t landed yet.” 

Adam lifted one shoulder, smirking a little. “You let me know.” 

Of course, because Ronan was nothing if not an obsessive piece of shit, he dreamed about it again the next night, but managed to hide it under the bed before Adam woke up. At almost twenty three, Ronan was better than he’d ever been about exerting some sort of control over his dreaming, but he still sometimes fell into the trap of hyperfixation loosening his grip on his own dreaming intent. (The second time he’d tried to take a class at Henrietta state, it only confirmed what he’d known: that the confines of the academic institution still made him feel penned in and angry, and he’d accidentally pulled frustration dream artifacts from his sleep for weeks until he dropped out, for the second and probably final time.)

He knew was pulling these stupid machines from his dreams because he couldn’t stop  _ thinking  _ about the problem, but trying not to think about it, and reminding himself that it was  _ none of his fucking business,  _ only made it worse. 

The third time, after managing not to dream one up for two weeks, he told Adam, “One of us is going to have to tell the Sargents about this.” 

“Yeah?” Adam prompted, and, assuming he had free reign to look at it, now that Ronan had brought it up, and he hadn’t run to hide it. 

He was touching it reverently, the way he was careful with most things. Ronan eyed his fingertips. “I mean. I wouldn’t just bring it over.” 

“Is it… what I think it is?”

“Come on, thinktank,” Ronan teased. “Like you can’t recognize a test tube machine when you see one.” 

“Ronan, you realize this is not a sensible machine, right? This is not a thing I just recognize.” 

“It looks like a test tube baby machine would look if you  _ imagined one, _ ” Ronan insisted. 

Adam was staring at it now, tipping it so he could look at it in the light of their bedroom window. “It looks different than the last one.”

“Fine tuning,” Ronan said. 

“What was wrong with the first two?” Adam asked him. 

“It was ugly, mostly.”

“Aesthetics,” Adam grinned. “The perfect reason to keep toiling.”

He was still engage in behavior that coming from Ronan would be “fucking around with” but coming from Adam looked like a scientific exploration. He opened a little tray, and then another. 

“So, this is where Gansey deposits his sample,” Adam said, circumnavigating the tray with his finger. He touched the other tray, “and then this is where…” 

Ronan stubbornly refused to answer, crossing his arms. “You fucking know what goes there.”

“I really don’t,” Adam said. He looked right on the brink of laughter, which was usually Ronan’s favorite look. Now, though, he wanted to go back to bed with a pillow over his head. “I’m a little worried you don’t either. This looks like an EZ Bake oven. You know there aren’t gametes that we can easily extract from her.” 

“Alright fucker, this is the last one, and then question time is over. I’m pretty sure she’s supposed to spit in it.”

“That’s not—” Adam spluttered, but Ronan put his hand over his mouth to cover the nonsense coming out; Adam is fucking trying to tell him about haploid and diploid cells like Ronan didn’t pull this machine out of his fucking  _ dreams.  _

Ronan shushed him, nudging the machine off the bed and slinging his leg over Adam to pin him and holding him close, nuzzling a nose against Adam’s face. “No being pedantic in bed.”

It wasn’t lost on him that Adam had to be thinking of the implications for them, that Ronan had very possibly created a tool to will a human child into existence, against the convention of human biology. That one day, the two of them might be able to put a sample in each of the trays and cook a child in his mad science EZ Bake oven. 

Ronan was half ready now, and Adam knew that, of course. Adam himself had just finished his bachelors, but hadn’t yet decided what came next, except that he wanted to take a year to be a working adult with Ronan, in Henrietta. 

Somewhere during the last four years, Adam had lost a little bit of that childhood anxiety, the tension of overturned strings that might snap within him at any moment. Some shift had happened at some point, in the way Adam thought about money, and provision, too gradually to see, but then there’d been a moment that had made Ronan take notice.

In fact, Adam didn’t know it, but there was a date Ronan considered as good as a wedding anniversary, because on that day during Adam’s sophomore year, he’d sent Ronan a text message that said,  _ Ro, my car is misbehaving very poorly. It might be the end for it. Can you front me $750 until my pell + paycheck come in??  _

Something in Ronan had settled, then, too, basking in the echoing knowledge that he would do anything for Adam without finding him wanting, and knowing that Adam knew that, and that they could have this conversation when two years before, Adam was careful to pay Ronan back for drive-through burgers when he picked them up. He was waiting for the date to roll around again so that he could propose, now that Adam was done, or at least on hold, with his education, and was finally soul-searching about what he’d like to do, what he’d be proud to do instead of what would net him the highest salary. 

*

This is what Ronan knows: Gansey is probably going to cry. He isn’t sure what Blue is going to do, but Gansey is definitely going to get choked up, because he’s an emotional mess. If there was only Gansey to consider, he would accept one of their periodic dinner invitation and bring it as a host gift. 

Blue Sargent, however, is their wild card. She might have been pleased. She might have punched Ronan in the dick, so they invite the Sargents over to the Barns, instead, where common decency might protect Ronan’s nads in his own house. 

What Ronan did not, in any universe, expect, was for Blue Sargent to knock him over, barreling into his chest like a small, unwieldy sledgehammer. “What the fuck,” he said, but he caught her all the same. “You fucking twerp.”

“The little gloves,” she gasped. 

Ronan made an attempt to hand her off to Gansey, who was doe-eyed but not crying, in a bit of a change-up. Gansey held his hands up. “Sorry, Lynch, you made your thoughtful bed, now you’re going to have to get thanked like a man.”

Adam caught his eye, grinning like a madman, because the man loves being right, and the little gloves, poking into the space of the the glass cylinder had been completely his idea. He’d brought up an image of a NICU incubator on his ipad and held it inches from Ronan’s face, and said, “If you’re going to have a visible fetus, you should probably include some way to interact, or they’re going to be tempted to tap on the glass,” and Ronan had sneered, “they’re fucking adults, who’s going to tap on the glass?” 

When Blue was finally on the ground, still leaking from the eyes but dabbing furiously with her sleeves, Gansey clasped his hand, and uses that to pull Ronan into a hearty hug. 

“Remember when I tried to tell you about Blue’s tilted uterus and you said —”

“I know what I said,” Ronan said, gruff. “But you were already basically a dad that I met you. It was a fucking travesty you couldn’t knock your girl up when Fucking Declan Lynch only has to wink at Ashley before she’s pregnant again.” 

“To be fair,” Blue sniffed, and she’s apparently run out of dry sleeve of her own and moved on to Gansey’s, blotting her face with his wrist like his body is an extension of her, “The reproductive problem is mostly mine. Being the sole owner of the uterus in question and all.” 

Adam touched her shoulder. “If you don’t know by now how easy it is to blame Gansey for all manner of things...”

Blue hiccupped a laugh. She was still holding onto Gansey’s arm, and Gansey looked at her in a way that made Ronan hear phantom notes of old jazz songs. “I love you both. I love you all, we have to call our boyfriend.”

When Gansey and Blue excused themselves to the spare bedroom, Adam took his hand. “Everything’s going to change,” he said. 

“It already has,” Ronan pointed out. “Nothing’s ever been normal for us. Blue killed Gansey that one time. I wrecked Gansey’s car and reinvented it. I think we might have both dated a magical forest before each other.” 

Adam rolled his eyes. “You’ve just fixed Gansey and Blue’s fertility problem. They’re going to wait about six minutes before they’ve got an alien growing in that tube.” 

“We could race them,” Ronan said, wiggling his eyebrows. 

“Not sexy,” Adam said, but his mouth ticked up at the corner. 

Ronan leaned in and kissed him, quickly. “We’ve managed so far. If the hornet demon or our latin teachers couldn’t fuck us up, I don’t think a kid is going to.”

“Me neither,” Adam said. His voice was very quiet, and he’d closed his eyes. “I think I’m going to love it.” 

Ronan felt his stomach flex involuntarily. He almost said  _ of course you are,  _ because Adam hated being told that other people knew his emotions better than he did. Instead, Ronan kissed his temple, smiling. “You could go be their other boyfriend, if you’re going to be obsessed with their kid.”

Blue Sargent came back in, mouth first, indicating she must have heard some part of that conversation. “While we will appreciate any and all love and adoration, Gansey and I have quite full hearts loving each other and our boyfriend, Henry Cheng who is handsome and delightful, and his girlfriend who is also handsome and delightful.”

Adam flushed red, spluttering as Blue patted his face fondly. 

“Gansey does not have the same lump of coal heart that you do,” Ronan teased her, secure in their own monogamy and exclusivity, “Gansey definitely has love for another boyfriend.” 

“This is true,” Blue said, shimmering and smiling at him. “I, however, am not a Kennedy, and have a limited supply of social energy so he has thoughtfully capped us out.”

They were all stupidly in love, a part of each other and a family. Ronan looked at the two of them and wanted for nothing, looked at his boyfriend and hoped for everything, thought of the future and felt a calm that had evaded him for much of his life. 

“You know,” Gansey said, “the two of you will have to be godparents.”

“How do you figure, Dick?” Ronan asked. 

“My life took an interesting turn tonight,” Gansey grinned. “Which is, you know, exactly what I’ve always wanted, but Blue had some interesting bullet points when she speed-painted our future, on the phone with Henry. The baby could come out less than human. Or it could come out only speaking latin, despite our best efforts.” 

“And number three, you fucking dumbass,” Blue said, smiling sweetly, “there’s no one we’d rather have mentor our children because we love you both. And you love us. Of course, plan A is to stay alive well into senility, because both Henry and Gansey are both going to be incredibly handsome with white hair.”

Gansey touched the back of his head self consciously. “She’s right,” Ronan agreed, nodding solemnly. 

*

There was no way to explain how incredibly strange it was to be able to see the Sargent baby develop. Adam was fascinated. He and Ronan sometimes watched it on the weekends, and Adam sometimes hefted the entire fluid-and-baby filled tube around the barns to soothe the restless thing. (Adam’s arms were very big, and it made Ronan’s mouth water to see the effortless way he paced with it, which Ronan knew from experience felt like lugging around an anvil.)

It wasn’t like any of them could take it anywhere in Henrietta, and they were hardly going to leave Blue and Gansey house-bound, so they took turns. 

It was a weird summer, which bled into a weird August, which, for the first time since high school, didn’t result in Adam leaving for school. Ronan had discovered a strange thing about himself: while the distance occasionally left Adam moody and frustrated, which in turn affected Ronan’s mood, he actually killed it at long-distance. He wrote letters and wasn’t afraid to drive all night if Adam was stressed out or in a shitty mood. He loved reunion sex. 

Ronan, however, had learned from the best person he knew at keeping people together, and when he realized near the end of Adam’s sophomore year how frazzled Adam’s nerves were, had thought,  _ WWDG(III)D  _ and driven all night to Boston, his trunk and backseat full, with chainsaw in a cat cage in the front seat. It hadn’t been a hard choice to follow Adam. He loved being in the Barns, but he’d follow Adam anywhere, even now, he knew, if Adam decided there was nothing for him in state.

“She looks like an alien,” Ronan told him, just to hear Adam say: “Fuck you, she’s a developing person. Also, we don’t know the gender yet.”

Ronan’s heart (and strangely, his libido) always lept when he saw Adam, defensive over Squid Baby Sargent. He still had issues over his own upbringing he was working through, and Ronan suspected it would still be a while yet before Adam would trust himself to be a parent, but Ronan could feel his affection for this strange test-tube child, as real and as honest as gravity. 

The prototypes sat under the bathroom sink, and under the bed, and the one in the garden shed. Ronan suspected, when Adam felt the time was right, he might find one on the kitchen table, or in the den, or out in the garden where the sun could warm the metal base. For now, he enjoyed the borrowed fish of their best friends, a second generation that already seemed to half-belong to them all. 


End file.
